Ok... this is one of my more "out there" thoughts. I am seeing a pattern in radical on-page content changes. About 3-4 days after a visit from googlebot to the changed paged there is a massive "negative hit" in rankings that lasts about 3-4 days and then returns roughly back to where it was plus a little gain. This cycle then repeats several times. The durations and timing of these events almost seems to coincide with my SEO content tuning intervals. I got chills down my spine when I thought for a moment that Google is using the timing of adverse events and subsequent change detection to goad me into reacting to a negative change and then detecting my content changing within a narrow time frame after the negative event. I wonder if I had reacted to the negative event right away if I would have "self selected" myself to Google as an SEO practitioner. It freaked me out enough that I convinced my clients to not react and wait and see. Sure enough... after 3 of these cycles (about 2 weeks) there has only been consistent, but slow, upward trending from where I had started. I do consistently see positive only gains everyday now, but those first two weeks after the big content overhaul were quite scary and unlike the 24hour google dance behavior we know and LOVE from the past.

Is this a new kind of google dance or was google actually trying to trick me into confessing my SEO practice?

I don't know, but it really has me thinking now that the new google is a very different beast.

I believe it is a new google dance. You have to figure it is possible that since caffeine is out, the google dance might be changed/reacting differently with the new changes to their speed/infrastructure.

My information might not have something to do with your observations. I experience on many of my autoblogs, that they get good natural rankings with the time, but only, if no new content is added. As soon as there are new articles (1 or 2 per week), the rankings drop drastically but a couple of days later, the good positions come back.

I found that out, that when looking in my rankingcheck-tool, that the domains with the best positions were, when my autoblog-tool had an error and did not post new content for 1-2 months.

But I do not draw conclusions like you from that, because after having much contact with the Google guys for about six years, I do not think, that they work that way. Your idea has too many implications.

I can confirm your suspicions with a test of my own. In fact, it wasn't even really a test, it was my newbie attempt at launching some things for the first time. It's funny you even brought this up. We launched a site for a keyword which ranked at 7 or 8 or so for a keyword.

Then we retuned and revamped it, and it fell to 300+.

Two days later (maybe three I can't remember) there it was at #2. And then a few days later, #1. Now we made a linkwheel today for it, and we own half of the top page. The site itself is below the linkwheel spokes, but my guess is that it will rise again.

The dip before the gain is true - its always been there for competitive KWs for as long as I can remember. For years Ive always warned new clients that when we start seo you can expect a dip and then... until this thread I though it was common knowledge Obviously still only a "hypothesis".

I have noticed this a couple of weeks ago exactly the same thing some of my higher ranking keywords dropped off the planet and then suddenly reappeared., I have recently also seen my rankings go up much faster than usual, it definitely is Caffeine kicking in.

my thoughts:
Have no way of comparing total traffic to these projects, however personal thought is that the google filter may be using things like title / description / meta as a trigger to see if sites are "over SEO'd" - an example may be that google may allow a higher keyword density for a page that doesn't have those keywords in the title / description / meta (as those appear to be SEO'd on purpose) than if it does (as that site would appear to be "not SEO'd on purpose").

Once again, anecdotal data and personal thoughts, but may help with your honeypot suggestion.

What's the point of a post like this, other than to increase your post count?

Keep your inner monologue to yourself..

and to the OP: Yes I've noticed similar dips in SERPs after changing around content, but rankings usually
return to normal within a week. Probably google's way of shuffling and recalculating your site's score..

Ipopbb: I've read quite a few of your posts, and it does appear as though you really know what you're doing when it comes to SEO (through quite a bit of experience) and you are constantly thinking/working on new ways to improve.

I think one of the best ways to do this, is exactly what you've done in your OP. What I mean to say is to simply look at things differently, even though it is based on nothing except pure speculation (alright, a LITTLE bit of evidence).

As to what it is that Google is doing, I've got my own little hypothesis, however yours adds nicely to it. I won't type out my thoughts on the subject all over again, but you can read over them here if you'd like (a post I made here on BHW):

I have a site that was #14 for primary keyword. (mydomain.com/index ) Few days back I made special landingpage for my domain - (mydomain.com/keyword) . Today it got indexed and now the index page is gone from serps and new landingpage is in its place but #20. Was going to senuke it , but your post got me thinking - maybe google is testing high relevance and highly optimized pages to find "hatters".
What I use to make my site look "natural" is that I make some "mistakes" in less important Meta tags. For description i use "Homepage" for some not so relevant pages I use titel tag - Mydomain or something else stupid. I even use some links with anchor "click here" To kame it appear as not optimized

Ok... this is one of my more "out there" thoughts. I am seeing a pattern in radical on-page content changes. About 3-4 days after a visit from googlebot to the changed paged there is a massive "negative hit" in rankings that lasts about 3-4 days and then returns roughly back to where it was plus a little gain. This cycle then repeats several times. The durations and timing of these events almost seems to coincide with my SEO content tuning intervals. I got chills down my spine when I thought for a moment that Google is using the timing of adverse events and subsequent change detection to goad me into reacting to a negative change and then detecting my content changing within a narrow time frame after the negative event. I wonder if I had reacted to the negative event right away if I would have "self selected" myself to Google as an SEO practitioner. It freaked me out enough that I convinced my clients to not react and wait and see. Sure enough... after 3 of these cycles (about 2 weeks) there has only been consistent, but slow, upward trending from where I had started. I do consistently see positive only gains everyday now, but those first two weeks after the big content overhaul were quite scary and unlike the 24hour google dance behavior we know and LOVE from the past.

Is this a new kind of google dance or was google actually trying to trick me into confessing my SEO practice?

I don't know, but it really has me thinking now that the new google is a very different beast.

Ok... this is one of my more "out there" thoughts. I am seeing a pattern in radical on-page content changes. About 3-4 days after a visit from googlebot to the changed paged there is a massive "negative hit" in rankings that lasts about 3-4 days and then returns roughly back to where it was plus a little gain. This cycle then repeats several times. The durations and timing of these events almost seems to coincide with my SEO content tuning intervals. I got chills down my spine when I thought for a moment that Google is using the timing of adverse events and subsequent change detection to goad me into reacting to a negative change and then detecting my content changing within a narrow time frame after the negative event. I wonder if I had reacted to the negative event right away if I would have "self selected" myself to Google as an SEO practitioner. It freaked me out enough that I convinced my clients to not react and wait and see. Sure enough... after 3 of these cycles (about 2 weeks) there has only been consistent, but slow, upward trending from where I had started. I do consistently see positive only gains everyday now, but those first two weeks after the big content overhaul were quite scary and unlike the 24hour google dance behavior we know and LOVE from the past.

Is this a new kind of google dance or was google actually trying to trick me into confessing my SEO practice?

I don't know, but it really has me thinking now that the new google is a very different beast.

Click to expand...

ipopbb, I think you are one of the top 10 members of BHW, but I have got say that this is way, way too paranoid. There is an outside chance that this is really what Google are doing, but it does not seem likely to me

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